John McCain has reversed himself on off-shore drilling and the Bush tax cuts, as his opponents point out. However, McCain acknowledges those changes and explains them (the oil situation has changed significantly and it has serious national-security implications, and McCain now admits that the Bush tax cuts worked). Obama changes his position and tries to hoodwink people into believing that he hasn’t. A gifted politician could get away with that sleight-of-hand once in a campaign, but when it starts becoming a habit, no one buys the act any longer — and Obama has a long string of reversals in just the last few weeks alone. People get annoyed when a politician repeatedly insults their intelligence.

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There’s a difference between “I’ve changed my mind – I was wrong” and “I’ve _always_ said that – you just misunderstood me before”.

Deana

Suek –

You are so right. The second method implies quite clearly that the listener is stupid and/or unable to detect similarities and differences in meaning. It is commonly used by people who are desperate to appear intelligent and don’t mind making others look bad.

And that is why Obama is so proficient at using it. It’s as if that technique was tailor made for him.

Deana

Tiresias

His lies will never catch up to him – no one’s ever going to report them.

The one sentence in Morrissey’s report that is demonstrably risible is: “People get annoyed when a politician repeatedly insults their intelligence.”

They do? Since when? You couldn’t possibly be talking about the AMERICAN people, Ed, with whom the surest road to political success is to routinely insult what passes for their intelligence.

Gore and Kerry came close to winning despite repeated lies and contradictions – Gore in fact won the popular vote. Both of them routinely contradicted not just previously held positions, but previously cast votes from their time in in government. (In fact both of them were so damn dumb that they apparently were quite surprised to find that votes cast in the congress and senate are recorded, and can be referred to. Holy cow – that’s not fair!)

The important part of that is not how dumb they were, or how routinely willing they were to insult the voter’s intelligence, but that they both made contests out of it.

It would be good if insulting the voter’s intelligence meant something, but if it does it’ll be the first time.

Ymarsakar

no one’s ever going to report them.

No one on his side will ever report them, but not everyone is an Obama loyalist.

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